NASA's Youngest Space Telescope Shouldn't Get Longer Life, Panel Says

SAN
FRANCISCO ? A NASA advisory panel is recommending that the Wide-field Infrared
Survey Explorer (WISE) mission end in October as originally planned instead of
continuing to search for comets, asteroids and stars during a three month
extended phase.

While the WISE
mission is expected to produce significant results, NASA?s 2010
Astrophysics Senior Review Committee said there was not adequate scientific
justification to continue the mission once the spacecraft depletes its supply
of hydrogen used to cool the onboard telescope and detectors.

The WISE
spacecraft built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder,
Colo., carries an infrared telescope built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory of
Logan, Utah, that is designed to detect the faint glow of distant objects with
instruments chilled to the point where they produce no detectable infrared
light.

The original
plan for the 10-month WISE mission, which was launched in December and managed
by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., includes one month for
on-orbit checkout, followed by a six-month survey of the entire sky in four
wavelengths of infrared light.

During the
last three months of the original mission, the WISE team plans to conduct a
second survey covering half the sky in those four infrared wavelengths.

Because the
spacecraft and telescope remain in excellent condition, Ned Wright, WISE
principal investigator and a professor at the University of California, Los
Angeles, proposed a three-month
extension of the mission to complete the second half of the second sky
survey in two of the four infrared wavelengths because those images could be captured
even when the hydrogen supply is exhausted and the instruments can no longer be
chilled.

That
additional three-month project, known as Warm WISE, would have added $6.5
million to the program?s $320 million price tag, according to NASA spokesman
J.D. Harrington. WISE mission officials also proposed spending $8 million on an
Extended Source Catalog, a detailed database of large objects, such as galaxies
and interstellar clouds of gas and dust, revealed in WISE imagery but not of
primary concern to astronomers looking at specific
stars or comets.

Currently,
WISE is producing approximately 7,500 images a day in each of four infrared
wavelengths.

That
original mission ?should produce a catalog and image atlas of great utility to
the entire astronomical community,? according to the report of the NASA review
panel. ?Although it is impressed with the promise of the cryogenic mission, the
Senior Review Committee did not find adequate scientific justification in the
proposal for the cost of either the Warm Extension or the Enhanced Data
Products.?